While at the Summit last week, I spoke with countless folks about their current sales and marketing challenges. More specifically, we spoke about what “Game On” would mean within their organization in the coming year. Over and over again, the answers focused on helping sellers improve their conversations by getting the most important information in the hands of their customers. We’re all struggling with the same challenge. We know the information that we need lives somewhere in our company in nine out of ten situations. We also know that it’s more often NOT the powerpoint deck or glossy marketing brochure that we’re looking for. We simply need that one nugget of information – a competitive tidbit, a customer success story, some key product information – that someone out there knows cold. But what happens if we don’t know who the right expert is for a specific question or situation? What happens if that person who seems to know everything resigns tomorrow? What happens if the folks in the field continue relying on the same one or two people – or worse, the same old materials – because they don’t have the time or the connections with the many subject matter experts that live in the home office or elsewhere around the globe?
Winning today means recognizing that the information your sellers need most already exists in the minds of experts across the company. Tomorrow’s strongest marketers will be those who stop creating new materials day in and day out. Instead, our job is to serve as the hub within the organization – the great collector of all things valuable, and the central entity who can share that information – that knowledge – with others when they need it most. For those of you at the Summit, Pam Thomas, head of Marketing for Lexis Nexis, spoke at length about this topic of “Marketing Enablement” and the interesting approaches her folks are taking to truly enable sellers by connecting them to the insights, experts, and information they need from departments across the company (as well as from one seller to the next). For those who missed this, check out Pam’s webinar later this week. Or tell us what you’re doing to focus on the tribal knowledge that exists within your company. What are you doing to ensure this information is being collected, shared, and delivered when sales reps need it most?
